Standardising Your Document Formatting
By default, every new Google Docs file opens with the exact same typographic settings: the Arial font, set at 11-point size, with single spacing. While Arial is highly legible on digital screens, it lacks the professional formality of Times New Roman, the modern elegance of Roboto, or the specific branding requirements of your corporate style guide.
If you prefer to write in a different font, manually changing the text style every time you create a new document quickly becomes tedious. You highlight all the text, open the font drop-down, select your preference, adjust the size, and then repeat this entire process again the following day.
Fortunately, Google Docs allows you to completely override the default formatting template. You can set a custom default font, size, and style. Once configured, every new document you create moving forward will automatically load with your exact typographic preferences.
How to Change the Default Font
Changing the default font requires you to create a “master sample” of text formatted exactly the way you want it, and then explicitly instructing Google Docs to use that sample as the new baseline for all future documents.
- Open a web browser and go to Google Docs (
docs.google.com). - Click on the large colourful “+” (Blank document) button to start a new, completely empty document.
- Type a single, short sentence onto the page (e.g., “This is my new default font.”)
- Using your mouse, highlight the entire sentence.
- Look at the formatting toolbar at the top of the screen. Change the font, the font size, and any other styling (such as line spacing or text colour) to match your exact preferences.
- Once the highlighted sentence looks perfect, leave it highlighted.
- Look at the menu bar near the top left of the screen and click on Format.
- Hover your mouse over Paragraph styles, then slide over to Normal text, and finally click Update ‘Normal text’ to match.
This tells the current document to use your new style as standard. However, you are not finished yet. You must now save this change across your entire Google account.
- Click on Format in the menu bar again.
- Hover over Paragraph styles.
- Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the sub-menu and hover over Options.
- Click Save as my default styles.
A small black notification box will appear at the bottom of your screen saying “Your default styles have been saved.” The process is complete. You can safely delete the sample sentence or close the document entirely.
Verifying the Change
To ensure the new default has successfully applied to your account, return to the main Google Docs dashboard and click the “+” (Blank document) button again.
As soon as the blank page loads, look at the font drop-down box in the toolbar. It should no longer say “Arial.” Instead, it will immediately display your newly chosen default font, ready for you to begin typing.
A Note About Existing Documents
It is important to understand that changing your default font only affects brand-new documents created from this point forward. It will not magically travel back in time and reformat your older files.
If you open a document you wrote last month, it will retain whatever font it was originally written in. If you want to update an old document to match your new default style, you must open it, highlight all the text (Ctrl + A on Windows, or Command + A on Mac), click Format > Paragraph styles > Options, and select Use my default styles.
How to Restore the Original Settings
If you experiment with a new font (perhaps an elaborate cursive script) and decide it is too difficult to read for everyday work, restoring Google’s original factory settings is very simple.
- Open any Google Docs file.
- Click Format > Paragraph styles > Options.
- Click Reset styles.
This immediately reverts your account back to Arial, 11-point, single-spaced text.
